Religious Exploration Blog
Welcome to the blog of our Director of Lifespan Religious Exploration, Tim Atkins, with his thoughts on parenting, Unitarian Universalism, and building faith as a family.
Welcome to 2022-2023 RE!
Thursday September 01st, 2022Happy New Year! That’s what it feels like, at any rate. Because this is a time of fresh beginnings. After a long time apart because of COVID, followed by a period of fits and starts and awkward learning as we transitioned to being a multiplatform congregation, we are kicking off the new church year with energy and optimism. Looking through this Religious Exploration booklet, I am thrilled to see the amount and the diversity of offerings for our children and youth, and their families. I hope you’ll take some time to read through this to see what is available at First Unitarian and I hope you’ll share this booklet with friends who might be seeking a place where children and youth are taught love (not hate) and curiosity (not fear), and where they can learn that they are precious, whole, and beautiful, just as they are.
I want to express my gratitude to our wonderful Director of Lifespan Religious Exploration, Tim Atkins; our dedicated LRE/Family Ministry Team, led by Carmen McBride; our teachers, advisors, and other volunteers; and to the students themselves, who are learning not just how to be members of a community but how to build Beloved Community. I want to share with you all my love and my blessings for a powerful and enlightening new church year!
– Rev. Diana Davies, Sr. Minister, ddavies@1uc.org
Welcome back! Even though this is my third year serving as your religious educator, in many ways it feels like my first year. It’s our first year having a fully in person program since before the pandemic. The last year here in Oklahoma has shown us how essential it us for our children and youth to have safe spaces where they are loved for exactly who they are. These loving and supporting relationships are the ultimate goal of our religious exploration program for children, youth, and families. I invite you to take a look at what we have in store for the 2022-2023 Church Year – we’ve got some exciting things ahead, like some wonderful family fun events, the return of chapels, and the return of OWL – the Our Whole Lives sexuality education curriculum. Don’t hesitate to reach out with any ideas, comments, or questions!
– Tim Atkins, Director of Religious Exploration, tatkins@1uc.org
We’re BACK!
Thursday March 10th, 2022Exciting News, Families of First Unitarian OKC!
It’s time. We’ve been waiting for this time for almost two full years. We’ve gotten through the worst of the pandemic, the vaccine is widely available for children and youth (with promising signs the vaccine for babies and toddlers is almost here), and we’ve been working on how to make our building safer in our new normal.
It’s time. It’s time to come back together. It’s time to reconnect. It’s time to reconnect with each other, it’s time to reconnect with our church building, and it’s time to reconnect with our faith.
It’s time to reopen. And it’s time for us to start rolling out our programming for children and youth once more.
With any kind of change comes both excitement and nervousness. And this is a big change! I’ve been your religious educator for a year and a half and have yet to lead worship inside the building or hold a face-to-face religious exploration program. For those that haven’t yet had a chance to meet me, I am so looking forward to seeing you and your family soon. And if you’re feeling anxiety around coming back together, please reach out to me with those concerns.
In this packet, we’ve got info on reopening for you. We’ve got info on what kind of programming to expect for the rest of the school year through end of May. We’ve got info on what our future hopes and plans are. And we’ve got a coloring activity for each child/youth in your family that they can bring to the church when we’re reopened!
On behalf of the entire staff team and on behalf of the Lifespan Religious Exploration Team, we are so excited to see you again at First Unitarian OKC.
-Tim Atkins (he/him), Director of Lifespan Religious Exploration, tatkins@1uc.org
Our Program Through End of May:
Important Dates:
February 20th – First Sunday Back in Sanctuary (with Youtube Streaming)
March 6th – First Sunday Back with Children and Youth Programming.
April 17th – Easter Sunday. All Ages Service with an Easter Egg Hunt at noon! On Friday, April 15th we will have an Easter Egg Dying Party as in years past.
May 22nd – Final Sunday of RE Programming for the school year.
New Schedule:
10:00-11:00 – Adult RE Hour
11:00 – Worship Begins
11:30ish – Children and Youth leave after the Time for All Ages portion of the service and head on out to their RE activity which will be held in Daniel Hall (for now!)
12:00 – Worship Ends, Social Time for Adults (including Parents) begins.
12:30 – Children’s and Youth RE ends. Parents pick up from Daniel Hall.
You’ve likely already noticed a big change! We are moving our RE time for the rest of this school year. Religious Exploration Classes for children and youth will move from its old 10am start time to start during the worship service. Why did we make that call? Primarily it’s space related concerns. We need to “open up” the rooms at the church, and we’re starting with the sanctuary and Daniel Hall.
To “open up” a room, we will be testing it before hand with at least one volunteer group of adults. We will be measuring air flow and air exchange rates in each room through Carbon Dioxide testing (easier than it sounds!) This process is going to take some time – we have to ensure our classroom spaces will be safe for kids in terms of proper ventilation before we start using the rooms regularly for children and youth. If the RE spaces open up quickly, then we will keep the same time but move our activities to RE spaces instead of Daniel Hall. After the school year ends, we’ll poll the parents to see if we want to move to 10am for the 2022-2023 RE Program Year or keep the RE time during the service.
Registration:
We need you to fill out a registration form for your kids to be able to attend our in-person activities! Please head on over to the following link to fill out the registration form. The sooner you fill this out the quicker we can plan!
Our registration form can be filled out online at https://tinyurl.com/1UCRegistration
What’s Sunday Morning Going to Look Like?
We will have a group for elementary school and a group for middle/high school. Once one group gets larger than 10, we will split into smaller groups. We would first split middle and high school to be separate groups, and then split elementary school into upper elementary and lower elementary.
These groups will begin in Daniel Hall. We expect that we will make a lot of use of the grounds outside the church when the weather is appropriate to do so. (For example, if the weather is nice, I fully expect our youth to prefer meeting outside rather than in Daniel Hall.) Children will be on one end of Daniel Hall with youth on the opposite end, with some kind of divider between them.
We will have chairs set up to be appropriate with social distancing. We will be mindful of social distancing requirements and recommendations for all of our RE activities.
We will NOT be using a standard UUA curriculum for the rest of the school year. We don’t want anything that has to be sequential – if you miss one week, we don’t want anyone to feel lost the following week. So, what will we be teaching instead of a curriculum?
Our theme is Reconnecting. Reconnecting with each other. Reconnecting with the church and the church building. And reconnecting with Unitarian Universalism. We know it’s going to take some time to relearn how to do church in person with each other again. We are going to have activities that focus on this idea of reconnecting and activities that tie to the larger theme in worship that day. We will pick back up using regular UUA curriculum and programming for the 2022-2023 RE Program Year in fall.
Important note: We will NOT be able to offer childcare for babies and toddlers YET. We first need to do a fair amount of room testing to make sure the Nursery and Toddler rooms will be safe with ventilation. Until the childcare rooms have been opened, kids 5 and under are welcome to stay with their families for the worship service and make use of the family/quiet room as needed. Once the rooms have opened up, we will contact childcare providers and offer childcare Sunday mornings. We can’t give a firm time frame on when this will happen, but we hope to have it done by the end of March.
COVID Protocols:
- Masks are required at all times inside the building for everyone aged 3 and up. We will have spares but please remember to wear one!
- All ages are expected to be fully vaccinated to the extent they can be (medical exemptions are possible on talking with the DRE and we know vaccines for the youngest aren’t available yet).
- We will try to maintain social distancing. But if a kid runs up to give another kid a hug, we aren’t going to punish them. We will gently ask them to maintain distance. To help with this, we will set up chairs/tables to be socially distanced. (If need be, we will roll out a color-coded nametag system for the kids like we were using for adults – red means don’t touch me, green means hugs are ok, yellow means ask first.)
- We will not be having any kind of snack/drinks during RE time
- We will regularly sanitize any relevant supplies, equipment, and toys.
- Group size will be limited to ten. If we have more than ten, we will split into multiple groups.
Summer and Fall Plans
So, let’s talk a little about the future with the Lifespan RE Program at First Unitarian OKC. We want to give you an idea of some of the things we hope and plan to do, and if you have thoughts and ideas don’t hesitate to reach out to Tim and the Lifespan RE Team.
Playground! We have launched a Playground Team that is working on envisioning and building our next, accessible playground! We’ve already gotten some funding to start with some of the underlying issues (like drainage) and have begun some of the work. We would like to hear your opinions about the playground! Please head over to this link to fill out a short survey at your convenience: https://tinyurl.com/1UCPlayground
Chalice Camp! Expect to see Chalice Camp come back for its <redacted because we aren’t sure the real number> year! Expect to see Chalice Camp the first full week of June like usual. We are currently putting together our Chalice Camp Planning Team – we’d love to have your help! Reach out to Tim if you’re interested.
OWL! We know a lot of families are anxiously awaiting the return of Our Whole Lives – our lifespan sexuality education curriculum. Our current plan is to offer a summer session of OWL for families who need to “make up” a missed OWL class because of the pandemic, and in fall we would return to a regularly scheduled OWL program (likely on Wednesday nights.)
Next School Year! Once fall comes and our 2022-2023 RE Program Year comes around, we will return to a regular style curriculum with cohorts based on school grades. We will certainly offer Coming of Age in 2022-2023, and any grades that missed Coming of Age due to the pandemic will be welcome to take it. This will be the return to a more familiar RE program – yes, there will be changes due to COVID, but it will largely be something familiar to you.
Summer is a great time to build faith as a family
Wednesday May 26th, 2021Summer is a time when families spend a lot of time together – sometimes, a little too much time together (let’s be honest :D) It’s easy to get wrapped up in the daily who needs what, who is crying about what, how to combat boredom today, etc. It’s easy to place our own needs aside – but, as someone once told me, we should never mistake the urgent for the important.
As Unitarian Universalists, one of the things we strive for is discovering our own spiritual path. It’s a part of not one but two of our Seven Principles – encouragement to spiritual growth and a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. When we’ve got many balls in the air that we’re juggling, which is certainly true of parenting during the summer, it should be a reminder that sometimes we need to let the balls drop and take a look inward. That we need to attend to our own spiritual garden, in whatever form that takes. Maybe it’s prayer, maybe it’s meditation, maybe it’s art, maybe it’s cooking. Whatever form feels right for you, take that time for yourself, and here’s what some research I’ve been reading has shown me: it’s also essential for your children to see you taking that personal spiritual time.
There’s something I want you to think about this time of year, when your children are spending more time with you than usual – how are you modeling spiritual growth? This is the time of year when children are more likely to pick up on your daily habits and model your behavior – how are you giving importance to your own personal spiritual growth, so you can show your children the importance of attending to their own personal spiritual growth throughout their lives? Your kids need to see you prioritizing your own spiritual growth first, so your kids learn they should prioritize theirs too.